Collaboration between human and animal nursing professionals can help tackle the climate crisis and the threat of antimicrobial resistance, according to those leading a project linking the two areas of healthcare.
Royal College of Nursing (RCN) professional lead for sustainability and registered nurse, Rose Gallagher, recently began the project together with Lisa Tolfree, a Bristol-based registered veterinary nurse and infection prevention and control (IPC) lead for animal health organisation IVC Evidensia.
“There is always something to learn from somebody else who is doing a similar role to you, but in a different field”
Rose Gallagher
Ms Gallagher and Ms Tolfree spoke to Nursing Times about the work they have done together, to mark World Hand Hygiene Day on 5 May.
The project sees veterinary nurses and registered nurses share information and best practice with each other regarding sustainability in IPC, particularly in relation to glove use.
Ms Gallagher said that human and animal health were “closely interrelated” and that a collaboration on this topic was only natural, and aligned with the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s ‘One Health’ agenda, which promotes an “integrated, unifying” approach between the professions.
“We share many of the same challenges,” she said.
“Pet owners expect vets or veterinary nurses to wear gloves, in the same way patients or their loved ones expect healthcare professionals to.”
She said that, as well as demonstrating that human and animal healthcare stood “next to each other on the IPC agenda”, the project was about disseminating information to professionals, and the public, about the “appropriate” use of single-use plastics, such as gloves.
“In fact, on some of those occasions gloves may not be necessary,” she said.
Ms Gallagher continued: “The best practice messages are around the appropriate use of consumables, and in this case, we were focusing on gloves as an element of infection prevention and control.
“The principles in veterinary health are the same as in human health in terms of exposure to excreta or body fluids or harmful drugs and chemicals.
“So it was actually very easy for us to link together around those messages for appropriate glove use.”
She said she hoped the project was “just the beginning” of better collaboration with animal health professionals like Ms Tolfree and that it had been beneficial for both sides, describing it as an opportunity “to learn from professional to professional”.
“We know that multi-professional working, particularly around anti-microbial stewardship… is a core element of those programmes,” she said.
“There is always something to learn from somebody else who is doing a similar role to you, but in a different field.
“So I really value those opportunities to discuss challenges, what’s working well, what’s not working well.”
“Anything that we can do to improve that communication and that link, I think, is going to be beneficial”
Lisa Tolfree
Ms Gallagher said it was a “natural time” to strengthen the relationships between registered nurses and veterinary nurses to help reduce the carbon footprint of all forms of healthcare and harness other benefits from improving IPC in both fields.
Meanwhile, Ms Tolfree said her profession had often felt as though it was “following along behind” innovations made in human healthcare.
This project, she said, as well as spreading information about the environmental impact of gloves, had helped her develop and improve her IPC role as a veterinary nurse.
“Things like auditing and validating our infection prevention control processes is something that’s quite relatively new for veterinary healthcare, but it’s something that has been happening in human healthcare for a long time,” she said.
“So that experience of being able to identify how we can perform those audits, how to make it as easy as possible for those who are leading infection control in the veterinary practices to be able to perform that… was really helpful.”
Ms Tolfree added: “The value [in the project] is being able to understand the processes and how it’s done from Rose in human healthcare, and how we can adapt that, or reuse that even, and just carry it over into animal health.”
She agreed with Ms Gallagher that more collaboration between the two professions in the future would be beneficial, in part because of the similar threats both human and animal health face such as a rise in MRSA.
“I think it still feels a little bit like the veterinary world and human world is [separate], but I think it’s definitely progressing [away from] that and anything that we can do to improve that communication and that link, I think, is going to be beneficial,” she said.
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